


Hank Cooper and Hot Dog Jones

by shrugheadjonesthethird



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 05:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18147608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrugheadjonesthethird/pseuds/shrugheadjonesthethird
Summary: The Cooper girls were new to town after their lives got flipped around. Betty is ten years-old and nervous about the prospects of a new life and trying to make new friends. That is until she was quite literally tackled by the happiest ball of fluff and energy she's ever met.





	Hank Cooper and Hot Dog Jones

**Author's Note:**

> Helllooo. Here is a precanon fluff that no one asked for but was stuck in my head.
> 
> Big thanks to Emily (miss-eee) for being an amazing beta and friend. Love you.

They had been there for a week before it started to feel like home. Betty and Polly Cooper had moved into Sunnyside Trailer Park after their lives were flipped upside down.

 

What had brought the Cooper girls to Riverdale, you ask? For that story, we’d have to rewind to six months earlier. Hal Cooper, the girls’ father, had murdered five people, their mother included. They had to testify in court, essentially locking in their father’s life sentence in the state penitentiary. 

 

Luckily, Polly had just turned eighteen and had petitioned for full custody of her little sister, ten-year-old Betty. The trailer was all they could afford until they got their settlement of their mother’s life insurance, and Polly had insisted getting away from their hometown was going to be worth it. In Riverdale, they weren’t the kids of a monster, they were just the Coopers, new-to-town residents. 

 

Polly found herself a job at the movie theater to make ends meet, while Betty was enrolled immediately into the Riverdale Central School District. The timing worked out perfectly - it was a few days before the start of the new school year.

 

Betty did what she knew--she made cookies and went door to door to meet her new neighbors. She was greeted mostly with annoyance. If it wasn’t just annoyance, it was silence. A lot of people didn’t answer their door, including her neighbor. She was yet to meet the Jones family, or who she assumed was the Jones family, based on the name on the mailbox hanging by the front door.

 

Betty was walking around the trailer park, on the way back from delivering the last of her cookies and taking in the different cut throughs in her new community when she was nearly run down by a gigantic white fluff. She bent down to steady herself before crashing to the gravel road. The fluff pounced on her, licking her face and wagging its tail.

 

“Well, aren’t you friendly? Hi!” She said petting the dog behind the ears. He promptly got off of Betty and she clambered to her knees, searching for a collar or some kind of identification, but she came up empty. “Well, you seem to be well taken care of, who do you belong to, friend?”

 

The dog just stayed put and cocked its head at Betty. She contemplated what to do before finally deciding to bring the dog home with her to see Polly.  She’d knocked on all of the doors she passed headed back toward her trailer, but not one person had ever seen that dog before. She thought it was odd that a well-behaved dog in what seemed a close community wasn’t known.  She walked in the door and the dog followed behind, eventually finding a corner of the room to curl up into. 

 

“Elizabeth Cooper! You were supposed to get your bearings, not a dog!” Polly exclaimed. 

 

“He found me! And he doesn’t have any tags. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t leave him by himself, Pol,” Betty pouted. 

 

Polly crossed her arms over her chest and regarded Betty and the dog carefully.

 

“You don’t even know its name.”

 

“I think I’ll call him Hank. Polly, can we  _ please  _ look after him. I promise I’ll look for his owner, I just couldn’t let him be by himself out there. I asked around to the part of the park I found him, but no one seemed to have ever seen him before. ”

 

“Fine, but he’s your responsibility. You have to walk him, feed him, take him out… all of it!”

 

“I promise, I will! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Betty’s blond pigtails swirled around her as she hugged Polly tight. She let her sister go, clapping her hands together in excitement. 

 

Betty fashioned a bed for Hank out of an old pillow and a sweater she was going to get rid of anyway and used two of her small metal mixing bowls for his food and water before she took it upon herself to walk to the nearest grocery store to find food for him.

 

\--

 

On the first day of class, Betty sat with her best posture in the second seat back closest to the window. She always liked to sit near the light, having the option to be distracted if she wanted it but very seldom taking it. She sat and waited patiently as her teacher, Mrs. Grundy called attendance. She heard her call  _ Jones _ and she looked around to see who the name belonged to--to see her probable neighbor, but she missed whoever it was who raised their hand silently. She sat forward, waiting for class to begin.

 

By the second week, class was in full swing and she found she loved her daily debates with the kid who sat in the back of the class with his ripped jeans, flannel shirts, and strange gray beanie. They would trade comments back and forth while the rest of the class stayed quiet.

 

He was smart, she could tell. There wasn’t someone else her age who had been able to really discuss the intricacies of their daily homework quite like he could.

 

It had been three weeks since she’d found Hank in the middle of the trailer park. She took him for a walk first thing in the morning before school and at night after Polly got home from work. No one seemed to notice her, or the pup, but she loved taking care of him. It gave her something to focus on that wasn’t her dead mother or serial killer father. 

 

Late one Saturday afternoon, just before dark, she’d found her way to Sweetwater River, and plopped herself under a big shade tree with her favorite book,  _ The Double Jinx Mystery _ , the fiftieth volume of the Nancy Drew mystery series. She was about to start a new chapter when she felt Hank’s leash tug harder than usual.

 

“What’s up, Hank? Wanna get going?” She said to him as she tousled his white fur at his ears.

 

Before she was even up on her feet, Hank was pulling her down a path she didn’t recognize. She lost grip of his leash and the dog bolted. She called after him, but it was no use. She set off running toward the direction Hank did in hopes to find him before something bad happened.

 

She was looking around frantically for her charge when she collided with something. Her book slipped from her hand and she landed on her hands and knees. Before she even looked up, she was apologizing. “I’m so sorry. I was just running, he got away and I have to…” she was interrupted by Hank’s familiar bark. She looked up to see him sitting patiently next to a pair of denim-clad legs and a dangling flannel.

 

She brushed herself off and reached for Hank. “There you are, buddy. You know you can’t run off like that. That’s how we got into this situation to begin with.” She reached for his leash, but it was already in someone else’s hand.

 

“What’re you doing?” he asked. 

 

“Oh,” she looked up to see the face of the familiar voice. “I’ve been taking care of him for a few weeks. I found him wandering around my neighborhood. He didn’t have any tags, and I didn’t want to leave him alone.”

 

He looked at her like she had three heads. She watched his eyes wander, taking her in. Her jeans were now dusty from her fall, but her sweater was still pristine and her collar perfectly starched, just as her mother always taught her to do. Her ponytail was slightly skewed, she could feel it. She reached up to tighten it and tug the strays behind her ear. 

 

“And what neighborhood is that?”

 

“Sunnyside. I moved in about a month ago now. You look a little familiar. Do you go to Southside Middle?”

 

“I do.” She could tell he was skeptical of her, and honestly, she didn’t blame him. She was new to town and she was just asking strangers questions.

 

“Okay, well. I guess I’ll take Hank and be on my way then,” she said slowly, reaching again for his leash.

 

“Hank? That’s what you’ve been calling him?”

 

“Well, yeah. I had to call him  _ something _ , so I called him Hank, like the main character from  _ A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court _ . My big sister read it to me before we moved here. She was reading it in college. She said it helped her understand it better to read it out loud,” she was babbling as the boy continued to stare at her. 

 

“Well, his name is Hot Dog.” His voice was deadpan as his hand pat the top of the dog’s head.

 

“Hot Dog?” Her face contorted in confusion. Why would anyone name their pet Hot Dog?

 

“Yes. I’ve had him since he was a pup. I’ve been trying to find him for a while now. I guess thanks for looking out for him.” He said before he was about to turn away from her. He spied her book still in the dirt, picked it up and handed it to her. 

 

“Thanks,” Betty smiled and she could see the semblance of a smile on the corners of his lips, too. “I’m Betty Cooper.” She offered her hand out for him to shake and he stared at it before taking it in his own.

 

“Jughead.”

 

“Well, Jughead, I guess I’ll see you at school?” She started walking back toward the trailer park. 

 

“I...uh...I live at Sunnyside, too. Can I walk you home? It’s getting pretty dark. I wouldn’t want you walking by yourself.” She watched as his hand found the back of his neck and it could have been a trick of the light, but she could have sworn he was blushing.

 

“Oh. Sure. Thanks,” she smiled and waited for him and the dog formerly known as Hank, to catch up with her. 

 

They walked in relative silence for a little while before Jughead spoke.

 

“We’re in the same English class.” She looked at him crooked. “I’m not surprised if you didn’t know that. I usually stay in the back and keep my head down, but lately, we’ve been getting into those heated debates, that is you, right?. You sit by the window, second row.”

 

“Yes.” The realization dawned on her, why the voice was familiar. How the beanie didn’t give it away, she wasn’t sure. 

 

“Did you know you have a freckle on the back of your neck?” Betty looked over at him, her jaw dropped. “Not that it’s a bad thing, I noticed it and figured since you can’t see the back of your neck that you might like to know.”

 

“So, you stare at the back of my neck in English class?” She teased.

 

“It’s far more interesting than anything Grundy could possibly teach us,” he shrugged.

 

“If you say so.”

 

They made their way into Sunnyside Trailer Park. Betty was sure they’d split off going their own separate ways, but when they followed the same path, she found she really didn’t mind his company, even if he was a little weird and awkward. 

 

She shoved her hands in her pockets as they turned down the same row of trailers. She looked over to Jughead.

 

“Are you following me home?”

 

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

 

They stopped at the same time and looked at each other. They each pointed to their perspective homes and laughed when they realized they lived next door to each other. 

 

“I guess you didn’t look too hard for Hot Dog, did you?”

 

“That explains why I could have sworn I heard him bark.”

 

They both laughed and stood awkwardly facing each other. 

 

“You can come and visit him whenever you want. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind it.”

 

“Right.  _ He _ wouldn’t mind.” Betty blushed at her implication. “It was nice to meet you Jughead. I’m sure I’ll see you around sometime.”

 

“Hey, Betty? Would you--uh. Hm. Would you maybe want to get together for homework sometime? You seem pretty smart.”

 

“What makes you think I’m smart?”

 

“Well, I don’t think you’ve gotten a wrong answer in Grundy’s class. And you named a stray dog after a Mark Twain character. What other ten-year-old do you know that would do that?”

 

“I’m sure you don’t need my help with homework, Jug. I never said it was by Mark Twain. How many ten-year-olds would know that?”

 

“I’m eleven,” he said squaring his shoulders. “But you’re right. But I’m pretty terrible at math. Maybe you could help me with that? And visit Hot Dog, of course.”

 

“Well, if you ever need help...or a dog sitter...just knock.” She smiled brightly toward Jughead and turned to walk back into her trailer. It was empty and quiet and, to Betty, unsettling.

 

She heard scrapping at her front door. She walked back and opened it, only to have Hot Dog run in and curl into his pillow bed. 

 

“I guess he missed you already,” Jughead shrugged.

 

“Well, I guess it seems we don’t really have a choice but to be friends.”

 

“If he insists,” Jughead smiled. He walked into the door and flung himself on her couch. She smiled wider and shook her head at him.  “Got any snacks,  _ friend _ ?”


End file.
